Gigmor Launches Marketplace to Match Musicians with Talent Seekers

Musician matching platform Gigmor has launched a live music marketplace to improve the booking process for up and coming artists. The marketplace helps connect independent musicians and bands with talent seekers, offering a solution to an often fragmented process.

Created in 2014 by David Baird, Gigmor was originally launched as a platform to connect musicians. Musicians looking to start a band, fill a player for a gig, or just jam could find like-minded artists through postings and profiles. Since then the site has attracted 50,000 members in 30 countries and made over one million matches.

This year the company decided to extend its technology to allow talent seekers the opportunity to also find artists.

“We found that while we had the musician matching site, we found that almost 1,000 industry people had joined,” Baird told Amplify. “Many of them were venues, but also band managers, festivals, and promoters who had kind of hacked into the site and used it as a talent discovery and booking platform despite the fact that it wasn’t really built for that. When we saw more and more of that happening, we thought it was time to build a product that really serves their needs.”

On the industry side, Gigmor’s marketplace allows talent buyers to post details about gigs where independent artists can submit themselves for the booking.

On the artists side, the artist creates a profile that’s meant to be a one-stop shop for anybody looking to hire them. Their profile can include their music, their gig history, and other information about themselves that, over time, will automatically display bookings made on Gigmor along with other metrics important to those hiring bands. Artists can post an ‘avail’ with what kind of work they are looking for along with where and when. Artists can still create a seeking post where they can continue to find other artists.

The other side of the marketplace is for talent seekers which can include event planners, individuals, or talent buyers for clubs, colleges, festivals, etc. They create a more basic profile and then add gig posts. They place a gig post on the site with all the hiring parameters like time, date, play, pay, payment terms, and anything else that will help specify what they are looking for in an act. The site will then facilitate the communication when an artist applies for the gig and track it until an agreement is made.

While the platform focuses heavily on the independent music scene, Baird suggests that Gigmor provides features useful to a range of facilities.

“Where we are is smaller clubs where people tend to wear several hats. They may be the manager, owner, talent buyer and the bartender,” Baird said. “Those people need the most help. They are living in the DIY world for finding and booking talent. We think we offer them a lot of value in helping them find and book talent.”

Larger clubs may find Gigmor helpful for “dark nights or slow nights or when they need opening acts that are local bands. We think it runs the gamut from the smaller clubs around the corner up to a bigger club that hire more national acts, but they might use us in different ways or for different purposes,” Baird added.

In addition to help connecting artists and talent seekers, Gigmor allows for data about shows that have occurred.

“It is useful for a talent buyer to see a band’s gigging history and we include their estimate of the draw, the audience size, or the ticket sales that they did which is key information,” Baird said.

Baird said that facilitating payments is on their development road map for this fall. Gigmor is also working on a feature that would provide a data score that will quantity a band’s audience size in a particular region which is an asset Baird believes will play a large role in the future of live event booking in the independent scene.

“Live music is the growth engine for music. Even well-recognized recording artists have to tour more than ever,” Baird said. “So we think our timing is very good because there is so much growth especially amongst independent, unsigned artists. They are the majority of booking revenues.”

For more information on Gigmor’s marketplace for live music and to sign up, head to Gigmor.com.

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Amplify Media was created by veteran reporter Dave Brooks. We are a 100% independent company dedicated to fearlessly covering the music business. We specialize in covering the live entertainment industry, focusing on promoters, agents, managers, venue executives and those serving the concert business.